Volume 2 Chapter 13

  Tan sat at his desk, his head propped up on one hand as he finished doing his math assignment. He was bored, but Swenshion’s constant presence kept him on task. Anyway, math was better than reading, and he was getting better at not mixing the numbers up in his head.

  He sighed. That was such a frustrating handicap. At least it was once his formal education had started. Before that it had never bothered him, because so what if he read something wrong? His important lessons in cultivation had always come directly from his parents, or from Zephyr, or he’d figured them out on his own.

  But there was more to being educated than the wisdom required for cultivation. Grudgingly, he admitted that there was a lot more to the history of the empire than he’d originally thought.

  He wasn’t stupid. He knew that. Swenshion insisted that, despite his learning disability, he was actually a very intelligent young man. When he was given a set of numbers to calculate, he usually arrived at the correct answer. He just had to double check the work if the numbers were written down to make certain he hadn’t transposed them at all.

  As for literature, well, he preferred being read to to having to do the reading himself, since he was slow at it. He’d read a sentence, then realize that he’d mixed something up and have to re-read it, sometimes more than once. But while the dry subjects like the history of trade deals or border disputes and resolutions or the marriages between noble houses were all very boring, there were many topics that interested him.

  “I think that is enough for today,” Swenshion said once he turned in his papers. “You may go do whatever you wish for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “Thank you, master Swenshion,” Tan said. He made a few funny faces at the little girl who was lying in some blankets on his way out the door. Swenshion’s daughter was cute. She often caused interruptions in the lessons as she cried for food, attention, or diaper changes, but the older children didn’t mind that so much.

  She was walking now, and talking a bit, but Tan was too busy to really play with her very much, so aside from returning his silly faces she didn’t say anything to him as he left the schoolhouse.

  Tan stretched as he stood outside the door for a minute, casting his senses into the wind to find his friends. They were off sparring, with both of the twins going against Po at the same time. He flew into the air to join them, but then he sensed something from the pond that caught his attention and went to investigate that instead.

  The thing that he sensed turned out to be Elder Pike transforming into his human form. The spirit carp was the most advanced of the spirit animals of the farm, and having received a few pieces of advice and insight from Tan’s mother, had advanced several times since Tan had caught the spirit fish several years ago and asked his father what to do about it.

  He realized, now, that the fish had never been as helpless as he had presented himself. Elder Pike had been much stronger than Tan when the sly old fish had taken the bate. It had been his way of making an indirect introduction to Tan’s father, but while Tren could have put the fish in his place easily, Tan would have been helplessly outmatched if the fish had truly fought for his life.

  Today, that situation would have been much different, as even with his advancements, Tan was swiftly catching up to the spirit animal in power.

  When Tan arrived at the pond, Elder Pike was still dressing, and Dewdrop was nearby, her back turned politely as the fish finished putting on his clothes.

  “Ah, young master,” Pike said. “I hope your studies are proceeding well?”

  “I suppose,” Tan said, landing and scratching the back of his head. “What’s up? You coming for dinner tonight or something?”

  “It’s not that,” Pike said. “Dewdrop has noticed something and asked me to investigate with her before disturbing the master and mistress of the land. As it is up a narrow stream which empties into the lake instead of the pond, I need to hike the distance instead of simply swimming there.”

  “Oh. I’ll come with you,” Tan said. “Is it something about the land?”

  “The water from one of the springs smells different,” Dewdrop explained. “I’m not sure how else to explain it.”

  “I’ll go get Ko too. She’ll know better than I whether it’s something to be worried about,” Tan said, and he flew off to where his friends were. They continued sparring for several minutes while he waited, not wanting to interrupt them, before they finished. Both boys were on the ground, with Pao having landed a solid blow to Won, but in doing so left himself open to be tripped by Ko, resulting in what they considered a draw.

  “Hey guys,” Tan said. “Pike and Dewdrop sensed something strange and are going to investigate. Let’s go check it out as well, to see if it’s something that we need to tell my parents about or not.”

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  The other children exchanged looks, then shrugged and followed after Tan. They arrived by Pike’s pond a moment later. Dewdrop had changed back into her doe form, as she was faster in that shape, and they sprinted along at a good clip some distance. Eventually they came to the source of a spring which flowed into the lake that was twenty miles or so away from the Shen household, one of Tan’s favorite fishing spots.

  “Here it is,” Dewdrop explained. She sniffed and drank from the spring. “It tastes different. Not wrong, but different.”

  Tan knelt by the waterside and took a sip of the water, but couldn’t sense anything. Ko, the water cultivator, also did the same. She swirled the water around in her mouth for a moment.

  “It’s less active,” Ko said eventually. “It’s not exactly lacking in spirituality, but it’s more like there’s less than there used to be? Which is a strange sense for me to have since I don’t normally drink from this spring I think. But I do get the sense that its like, I don’t know. I think we should ask your mom.”

  “I’ll go get her,” Tan said. “You guys wait here.”

  So he flew back to the main house, where he found his mother in the kitchen. He quickly explained the situation, and Wensho put aside the dough she was kneading. “That needs to rise anyway,” she announced. “Okay, show me this spring.”

  Tan flew off again, confident in his mother’s ability to keep up with him on the ground, and they arrived only ten minutes after he’d left his friend behind. His mother took a sip of the spring and nodded.

  “You’re right. Something has changed, but it’s nothing that we need to interfere with or do anything about. Someone has claimed Umbrine, the spirit of the aquifer beneath these lands. The lesser spirits of the land are stepping in to fill the vacuum left behind by her, and that will be difficult for them. But it’s not a bad thing. It will give those lesser spirits a chance to grow and evolve. It’s the same sort of thing that always happens when an imperial spirit is bonded by a human.”

  “Oh,” Tan said. “So it’s no big deal?”

  “Most likely. It depends on who bonded Umbrine. She is Rudeus’s equal in strength, I believe, but she’s a bit cantankerous and grumpy. There’s no real way of figuring out who has her. Eventually, however, they will pass away and Umbrine will return to her normal place in the world. The lesser spirits will have grown in her absence and she will have grown on her journey, and the land will be stronger for the experience. It is part of the cycle of all things.”

  The other children nodded.

  “We are sorry to have troubled you with this matter, in that case,” Dewdrop said, bowing to the superior water cultivator.

  “Oh, no, you were quite correct to do so. If Renton were still here I would tell him about this discovery, since it means that there is the potential that another imperial level cultivator will appear among us soon. But it’s not really a threat to the empire, so I’ll just drop a line in the next letter we send him through Lord Hara.”

  “As you say, Lady Wensho,” the doe said. “I will take my leave then,” and she ran off.

  Elder Pike also bowed to the mistress of the waters of the land and marched off to return to his pond.

  The children thanked Tan’s mother for educating them on the matter, then returned to their sparring field to get some of their energy out before they retired to the cultivation hill, where they would remain until called for dinner.

  Once they were gone, Lady Wensho’s expression turned more serious. She waved her hand at the water, and a Qi construct appeared.

  “Your imperial highness,” she said. “An imperial level water spirit has been claimed. Just thought you should know.”

  The Qi construct, in the shape of a fish, absorbed the message and vanished into the waters of the spring. It would travel through the twisting and complicated watershed of the lands before eventually arriving at the imperial palace and passing on the message to the emperor himself.

  That it was just as likely to do so by appearing in his cup of wine as in his bath was a minor amusement to Wensho, but ultimately she would not have bothered her brother in law in such a manner unless the news was more serious than she had let on to the children. It wasn’t something for them to concern themselves with, after all, just as she had said.

  Probably it was nothing. An imperial spirit gave one an advantage in cultivation, especially in the later stages, but there are many ways to gain advantages. Unless the child who had bonded Umbrine also possessed an imperial constitution and a mind suited for cultivation, it was unlikely that they would rise too far above their peers.

  It was more of a matter of keeping track of the available imperial spirits than anything else. Having Umbrine claimed meant that there was one less wild imperial spirit to be claimed by the imperial family, after all.

  She frowned, recalling the problem of Hao Shen.

  Was his hand behind this, she wondered? Her expression continued to darken as she wondered what the ghost of her father in law was up to.

  Then she returned home, punched down the dough she had been making and threw it into the oven. While Umbrine’s disappearance was of more concern than she had let on to the children, it wasn’t enough to really ruin Wensho’s day. So when her daughter came running into the room to show off her drawing, Wensho completely put the matter out of her thoughts.

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